Cranston argued that scarcity makes universal welfarerights impossible. After showing that this argument cannot be avoided by denying scarcity, I consider four challenges to the argument which accept the possibility of conflicts between the duties implied by rights. The first denies the agglomeration principle; the second embraces conflicts of duties; the third affirms the violability of all rights-based duties; and the fourth denies that duties to compensate are overriding. I argue that all four challenges to (...) the scarcity argument are unsuccessful. I then discuss Eddy’s recent challenge, which makes welfarerights context dependent, but I argue that this also fails because it makes rights unknowable. I conclude that the scarcity argument, restated in the light of the discussion, shows that universal welfarerights, as ordinarily understood, are impossible and I explain the philosophical and practical significance of this conclusion. (shrink)

The article tries to qualify the contentious issue of whetherthere is a human right to welfare. Our notion of human rightsis practically without criteria for distinguishing between whenit is used correctly and when incorrectly. The first step inany satisfactory resolution of the issue about welfare rightsis to supply duly determinate criteria. I then consider thechief reasons for doubting that there is a human right towelfare, in the light of what seem to be, all things considered,the best criteria to (...) attach to the notion of a human right. (shrink)

In this paper I defend a theory of welfarerights for nonhuman animals. I do this by demonstrating that a well-established framework for protecting the interests of farm animals, the ‘Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare’, is already functioning just as a set of rights. To support this claim I adopt a common approach to detecting evidence for deontological reasoning and look at the structural features of rights. I first consider Hohfeld’s system of legal rights (...) and consider whether the Five Freedoms may be understood as liberties or claim rights, before making a more successful comparison with side constraints and an interest theory of rights as understood by Nozick and Raz. I also respond to a likely objection that it is not possible to have some welfarerights without a right to freedom from exploitation. The argument therefore contributes to breaking down the stubborn division between ‘animal welfare’ and ‘animal rights’. (shrink)

The fact that welfarerights – rights to food, shelter and medical care – will conflict with one another is often taken to be good reason to exclude welfarerights from the catalogue of genuine rights. Rather than respond to this objection by pointing out that all rights conflict, welfarerights proponents need to take the conflicts objection seriously. The existence of potentially conflicting and more weighty normative considerations counts against a (...) claim’s status as a genuine right. To think otherwise would be to threaten the peremptory force – and hence the analytical integrity – of rights. The conflicts objection is made more pressing once we have conceded that welfarerights give people entitlements to what are potentially scarce goods. I argue that welfarerights can survive the conflicts objection if, and only if, we take scarcity into account in the framing of a given welfare right. (shrink)

In this essay I will try to develop a natural law justification of welfarerights. The justification I will undertake is from the perspective of Catholic natural law, that is, the strand of natural law that has been developed theoretically by Roman Catholic canonists, theologians, and philosophers since Aquinas, and affirmed by Catholic teachers as the basis for most moral obligations. Catholic natural law is, therefore, natural law as developed and understood by Catholics or others respecting Catholic traditions (...) of inquiry. It is not, however, primarily or exclusively natural law for Catholics, since the very idea of natural law includes the conviction that it is accessible in principle to anyone.Footnotes* I wish to thank the other contributors to this volume for their helpful comments on a presentation of an earlier draft of this essay. I am also grateful to John Finnis, Germain Grisez, James Murphy, Ellen Frankel Paul, and Michael Vertin for written comments on the earlier draft, which revealed many errors and suggested significant improvements. (shrink)

In Are Equal Liberty and Equality Compatible?, Jan Narveson and James Sterba insightfully debate whether a right to maximum equal negative liberty requires, or at least is compatible with, a right to welfare. Narveson argues that the two rights are incompatible, whereas Sterba argues that the rights are compatible and indeed that the right to maximum equal negative liberty requires a right to welfare. I argue that Sterba is correct that the two rights are conceptually (...) compatible and that Narveson is right that right to negative liberty does not conceptually require a right to welfare. (shrink)

In a recent line of cases, senior judges in the UK have been called upon to adjudicate in complaints over the failure of health and local authorities to meet the welfare needs of citizens. Local authorities claimed that the disputes had been precipitated by a lack of resources allocated by central government to meet local demand. This article examines the role of the courts in resolving a fundamental tension between central government policy of financial cost-cutting on the one hand (...) and welfarist principles embodied in legislation for the delivery of public services on the other. Questions are raised about the relevance and appropriateness of rights-based adjudication in welfare needs contexts and about the reluctance of courts to intervene in the resolution of resource allocation disputes even where fundamental rights, particularly in areas such as health, community care, and education where notions of rights are inextricably bound up with use of financial resources. These key cases have arisen prior to the implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998. Where relevant, the likely impact of the Act on welfare needs disputes is considered. (shrink)

Purebred dog rescuers are doing their part to reduce the problems of homeless pets and pet overpopulation. The volunteers studied are doing the daily and invisible work of saving dogs. Because of their perception of the animal rights movement, however, they do not consider themselves part of the animal welfare or animal rights movement, nor do they care to be. Dog rescue organizations agree with academics and activist organizations on the cause of the problem of homeless pets (...) and pet overpopulation, but they differ on the theoretical, political, and ideological solutions to the problem. This paper focuses on the disagreements between rescue workers, activists, and academics and asks whether there is a place for rescue workers within the larger animal protection movement. (shrink)

Abstract The Kantian moral foundations of Nozickian libertarianism suggest that the claim that self?ownership grounds only negative rights to property should be rejected. The moral foundations of Nozick's libertarianism better support basing property rights on moral desert. It is neither incoherent nor implausible to say that need can be a basis for desert. By implication, the libertarian contention that persons ought to be respected as persons living self?shaping lives is inconsistent with the libertarian refusal to accept that claims (...) of need can sometimes outweigh claims to property. (shrink)

The right to private property is among the most fundamental in liberal theory. For many liberals the idea of the state is grounded in its role as a protector of private property. If the liberal state is justified by its ability to protect property, the modern welfare state is often justified by its ability to meet needs. According to a view commonly referred to as “welfarism,” the very fact that needs exist implies there is a moral obligation to meet (...) them. In this Article I appeal to Rawlsian contractualist justification, including the “criterion of reciprocity,” in developing a third manner of thinking about the relationship between property and welfare. I argue that welfarerights are necessary conditions for justifying a role for the state in enforcing the “right to exclude,” a fundamental element of private ownership. My Article thus aims to use Rawls’ account of justification, outlined in his later works, to theorize the notion of property-owning democracy from Theory of Justice. (shrink)

Brettschneider argues that the granting of property rights to all entails a right of exclusion by acquirer/owners against all others, that this exclusionary right entails a loss on their part, and that to make up for this, property owners owe any nonowners welfarerights. Against this, I argue that exclusion is not in fact a cost. Everyone is to have liberty rights, which are negative: what people are excluded from is the liberty to attack and despoil (...) others. Everyone, whether an owner of external property or not, benefits from this and thus rationally exchanges that liberty in exchange for a like abandonment of it by others. The proper social contract trade is thus liberty for liberty—not liberty for owners and positive welfarerights for nonowners. (shrink)

This paper deals with three topics: types of rights, the development of the terminology of rights, and the question of the primacy of welfarerights. Because these topics are interrelated, my exposition does not observe rigid boundaries among them. There is no pretence at all that any of these subjects is fully covered here; nor is it proposed, except for one writer, to touch upon the contemporary literature on rights, as noteworthy as some of that (...) literature is. In order to gain entrance into the field, on which the writing has grown to massive proportions, I shall begin with an interesting historical phenomenon, some of whose philosophical import I want to explore. I should say at the outset, however, that the general motivation of this paper is the problem of the significance of the language of “rights.” Does it really make a difference, for instance, to speak of the “rights of man” rather than the “common duties of humanity”? Does the term “rights” add anything of special significance or is its only significance rhetorical and ideological? Can we dispense with the language of rights and still say everything we need to say about our moral relations? I confess to a moderate skepticism about the necessity of the language of rights in the last analysis. At any rate, this paper is intended as a contribution, however small, to this problem. The historical phenomenon with which I am going to begin will enable us to bring into focus the issue of the meaning of “rights.”. (shrink)

International and UK legislation and policy development in childcare is placing more emphasis on children's participation rights. This continues to present ethical dilemmas for childcare workers who also have the responsibility to ensure the protection and well-being of children. In Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government has made a commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the ?Rights to Action? child welfare policy. In England, the government introduced five aims and outcomes of (...) children's well-being in the ?Every Child Matters? child welfare policy. This paper identifies three barriers to children accessing participation rights, and critically discusses the ethical implications of the English and Welsh child welfare policies for children's participation rights. Family Group Conferences are discussed to highlight dilemmas of participation. (shrink)

The disability rights movement (DRM) has often been closely associated with the liberal values of individual choice and independence, or the ?ethics of agency?, where enhancing the capacity to make autonomous decisions in various policy and practice-based contexts is said to facilitate disabled people's well-being. Nevertheless, other liberal values are derived from what will be termed here the ?ethics of self-acceptance?. The latter is more disguised in liberalism and the DRM, as rather than emphasising the capacity to make autonomous (...) decisions, self-acceptance focuses on the positive acceptance of individual limitations, but again to enhance well-being. The further argument is that while the ethics of agency and self-acceptance often logically cohere and overlap, through promoting the values of self-respect and relational autonomy, dilemmas arise from our asymmetrical, or uneven, dispositions towards time, and present and future lives and experiences. For example, positively accepting individual limitations allows for a present-oriented immersion in ?the moment?, but which often requires some suspension of future-oriented goals and aspirations. Understanding some of the implications of this asymmetry, and the dilemmas arising from it, provide important insights concerning approaches to physical and intellectual impairments and the subsequent debates within the DRM, social policy and welfare practice. (shrink)

Sen's "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal" was meant to crystallize his fundamental criticism against the welfaristic basis of welfare economics in general, and social choice theory in particular. This paper vindicates Sen's criticism, arguing that its logical relevance is not lost in light of recent criticisms against his method of articulating individual rights in terms of a person's decisive power in social choice. We show that some recent proposals that Sen's articulation failed to capture a strong libertarian (...) tradition of free contract and that an appropriate formulation of this tradition wipes off the Sen impossibility cannot be sustained. We then show that the game form articulation of rights casts serious doubts on the Sen articulation of liberty, but the Sen impossibility strenuously comes back in the context of realizing conferred game form rights as well as in the context of initial conferment of game form rights. (shrink)

: Many people have lamented the proliferation of human rights claims. The cure for this problem, it may be thought, would be to develop a theory that can distinguish ‘real’ from ‘supposed’ human rights. I argue, however, that the proliferation of human rights mirrors a deep problem in human rights theory itself. Contemporary theories of natural rights to welfare are historical descendants from a theory of rights to subsistence which was developed in twelfth-century (...) Europe. According to this theory, each human being has a special role to fulfil in God's plan and therefore has inalienable rights to subsist. Later theories have secularized this idea by claiming that human beings are purposive agents. Secularization, however, comes at a price. In the case of these theories, the price is a failure to provide satisfactory answers to the most basic questions we would expect of a theory of natural rights to answer. They have failed to provide a basis for ascribing these rights to all and only to human beings. They have not been able to generate a clear and viable criterion for ascribing duties correlative to these rights. And they cannot limit rights-claims in a non-arbitrary way. Hence we should abandon these theories. (shrink)

Animal liberationists tend to divide into two mutually antagonistic camps: animal welfarists, who share a utilitarian moral outlook, and animal rightists, who presuppose a structure of basic rights. However, the gap between these groups tends to be exaggerated by their allegiance to oversimplified versions of their favored moral frameworks. For their part, animal rightists should acknowledge that rights, however basic, are also defeasible by appeals to consequences. Contrariwise, animal welfarists should recognize that rights, however derivative, are capable (...) of constraining appeals to consequences. If both sides move to more defensible theoretical positions, their remaining differences on that level may be compatible with a broad area of convergence on practical issues. Keywords: animal welfare, animal rights, ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)